Mardi Gras is traditionally a time to let loose. Second lines, family gatherings, parades and marching bands fill streets. A lot of people eat too much, drink too much, and stay out too late.
But for thousands of New Orleanians who are on probation or parole, Carnival comes with curfews, travel restrictions and the risk that a single violation can send them back to jail.
They have one focus during Carnival: stay out of trouble.
“It’s a mental thing,” said Corey Bozeman, who is now on probation after coming out of prison free and clear, having served 20 years at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He is determined that he has seen his last arrest, he said. For him, that means having the discipline to stay away from certain people, places and activities.
“At the end of the day, it’s not about what you see everybody else doing,” Bozeman said. “It’s about you having the fight within you to enjoy yourself freely.”
Standard probation and parole rules often ban alcohol or marijuana, limit travel and restrict contact with people who have criminal records — conditions that can be harder to follow during crowded parades that run late into the night. Those requirements are typically spelled out in court orders and supervision agreements issued by judges and probation officers.
During parades, Bozeman stays alert. He brings his own cold drinks and water so that he can avoid alcohol and tries to “walk a straight line,” by doing right, staying out of the way and remaining mindful of his decision. He barely goes to parades, for fear of getting caught in traffic or in the midst of people fighting or acting badly in the crowd. As much as he can, he finds joy in his freedom, home with his family.
Because outside, any mistake could mean a violation. And anyone whose probation or parole is violated could return to jail or prison. That requires vigilance—especially near St. Charles, where people are partying and law enforcement gathers in large numbers.
Enjoying the culture, but staying back
Before prison, Danielle Metz remembers Mardi Gras mornings starting at her grandmother’s house, where family and friends gathered before heading to the Zulu parade.
“Everybody would go by my grandma’s house,” she said. “My grandma would have a big ole Magnalite pot of beans.” It was paradise for a child. “I’m telling you, she could cook some beans and her rice be so grainy, and you get hot dogs, you get chili,” Metz said, recalling the highlights of what was on the table during childhood Fat Tuesdays.
While in federal prison for 23 years, Metz longed for those familiar scenes, when relatives traveled in from out of town, turning the house into a meeting point before and after parades.
But today, Mardi Gras carries a weight, Metz said. “Emotionally, I think about everything I missed,” she said. “It’s everything with Mardi Gras—it kind of represents freedom and cultural release. But I may be carrying something heavy.”
Even after she was granted presidential clemency in 2016, she couldn’t just fall back into those old routines. For one thing, her first five years were spent on probation. And though she tried to embrace her hometown’s traditions, she had to keep a close eye on her watch, she said.
There was the time, for instance, where she walked down to Cafe du Monde and thought she’d take a mule-led carriage back to her halfway house, where she had a 5 p.m. curfew.
“But the mule was not moving fast enough on Decatur Street,” she said. She tried to be patient. But the mule was taking its time. “I thought, I can’t go back to jail. So I got out, panicked, and I ran to the nearest corner and called my brother. ‘I said, Please come get me. I’m gonna be late. I’m gonna be late. They’re gonna violate me.’” She ended up making it back in time. But it reminded her that she could not be in any situation that was out of her control.
“It doesn’t take much to be violated,” she said. “You can change your life in a matter of minutes.”
Metz gets Randazzo’s king cakes and ships them to friends across the country, “because I want them to have a little piece of Mardi Gras.” But as the city celebrates Carnival, she keeps a careful discipline, avoiding crowds. “If anything happens, I don’t want to be anywhere near it. I don’t want my name connected to nothing,” she said.
So, instead of standing along the parade route, Metz usually stands on the outskirts, often in the lanes of St. Charles that run in the other direction, where she is separated by the neutral ground from the floats. From there, she watches and soaks it all in. But she stands far enough that no beads —and no trouble— come her way. “I can see that it’s beautiful, but it’s not for me,” she said. “Because I’m free in a sense. But I’m still restricted.”
She gets some vicarious Carnival experiences, when she sees the bags full of throws that friends bring home and she hears their parade stories. “But I have a survival-guilt thing. So it’s hard for me to enjoy, knowing that people are still suffering.”
Sometimes, even in her anti-prison work, she throws on a purple, gold, and green outfit, like she did in January to celebrate the new mural painted alongside the wall of the jail, the Orleans Justice Center, which includes an image of her.
Even when she sat for a photo shoot for The Lens for this story, she found herself enjoying herself. “That’s probably how I would show up if I were to celebrate,” she said. But then she started to remember the people she’d left behind. And, just that quick, she lost the celebratory feeling.
Curfews versus Carnival
When her son was 16 and on probation, Mardi Gras came with a curfew, Nziki Wilkes recalls.
All through his childhood, the family had spent Mardi Gras on the neutral ground near the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Felicity Street. They’d put two kids in the red family wagon, and head to Felicity. “It was just a tradition, pulling a wagon, eating together, playing, catching beads, man, watching the floats go by.”
But then her son caught a charge. He became one of the young people on court-supervised probation in New Orleans who must adhere to strict curfews that require them to be home by a certain hour, long before the completion of Carnival parades that run late into the night.
At first, they tried. “We left the parade early once,” said Wilkes, a political organizer with Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) . “After that, it was so hard, like, to have to maneuver through traffic and try to beat the clock with a parade. You never know when you’re going to get blocked in.”
In the end, they just decided he should stay home, to avoid the possibility of violations.
Because her son could not risk going out during Carnival, they brought the celebration home instead, decorating the house in purple and green and bringing home beads from the parade that threw them to him, so he could still feel included.
It was hard for him—and his siblings—to be apart during Carnival season.
“It wasn’t just affecting him, it was affecting his siblings because they really ain’t wanna leave him behind,” she said.
Curfew violations and fist fights
A New Orleans legal advocate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he and his colleagues typically see a rise in youth arrests during parade season, crowded streets and late-night celebrations collide with citywide youth curfews, which are enforced for any youth 17 and under starting at 9 p.m. on Sunday through Thursday and at 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. In the French Quarter, the curfew hits even earlier, at 8 p.m. (Youth accompanied by a parent or legal guardian are not subject to curfew.)
During Carnival, children’s agencies and juvenile courts usually see a high volume of cases, because teens love to gather together toward the lower part of St. Charles. Other teens traverse the parade route from top to bottom, following along with their high school bands. When that many young people gather, friction and some fistfights are liable to break out, leading to other charges and overflowing intake rooms.
Back at Angola, some men have memories of all-day Carnival booking rooms dating back decades. A few started making phone calls earlier this month. “Listen, son, I just called your cousin and now I’m calling you,” said one uncle. “I know Mardi Gras is coming up. And you don’t need to end up in nobody’s jail.”
